Connecticut Colony

The Connecticut Colony was an English colony in North America that existed from 1636 to 1776, with Hartford serving as its capital. In 1636, the radical Puritan preacher Thomas Hooker led an exodus of 800 colonists from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the Connecticut river valley, where they founded Hartford and neighboring towns. In 1639, the towns adopted the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, a quasi-constitution that could be altered by the vote of freedmen. The colony later fought against the Pequot in the bloody Pequot War, and Connecticut refused to join the Dominion of New England. The colony was joined by Saybrook in 1644 and New Haven in 1662, and Connecticut became a part of the new United States in 1776.